


Retrospection

by B_lackie



Category: Borderlands, borderlands 2 - Fandom
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2579087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_lackie/pseuds/B_lackie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Retrospection was really never Brick’s strong point.<br/>But he knew that nothing would ever be the same again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retrospection

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd and english isn't first language.  
> Written as intro drabble for tumblr rp account.

`✭` **_M_ ** aybe it was silence that had first awoken Brick. Maybe it was his dreams, vague shadowy thoughts that drifted through his subconscious and left only a flare of pain in their wake. Either way he found himself awake, blinking bleary, sleep-crusted eyes towards the tattered underside of the empty bunk above him. It was late, this ungodly hour, in the Crimson Lance HQ within Sanctuary and after the horrid long day’s events everything remained quiet. Silent. _Empty_. A hand drifted upwards, cradling gently first one than the other of the paws hanging from that chain around his neck. _Priscilla_. _Dusty_. It was a gesture sought mainly for comfort, to calm the rage and pain that still coiled deep inside… but he couldn’t accept that, couldn’t give into that. Not now. Stifling an audible grunt the berserker moved to slide to the edge of the uncomfortable, lumpy mattress… standing up to head into the main area of the headquarters—surprisingly silent for a man his bulk and size. He had to move—had to do something!—or else the restlessness would be too much. The inability for action, lost in thoughts and memories and whatever his mind's slumber had dredged up and left behind, gnawed at him hungrily, painfully, but perhaps they all needed their own methods to cope.

The vault hunters were here, mostly. Gaige, the mecromancer, curled up in a snoozing little ball on the floor with her tools and the half-repaired Deathtrap. Axton, the commando, half passed out in a slumped slumber against the wall—only lifting his head slightly, once, towards the massive figure at the door before dismissing it and relaxing back into a war-torn sleep. The blue Siren—Maya—nestled on the tatted couch using the arm of her psycho pet as a pillow. Zer0, the assassin, seated on the other end of the couch—although Brick could honestly not tell if the enigmatic man was really sleeping or not. Who _could_ tell? The only one not in immediate eyeshot was the short man, the gunzerker, but the acrid stench of one of those handmade cigars told him more than words did. A step to his right, almost a shuffle to keep quiet, and he could see Salvador’s hunched back from where he was seated on the balcony’s rail outside—smoking his cigar in silence.

Brick did not go to bother him. They all needed their own methods to cope.

It was the sound something between a snort and a muffled, near-choked back sob that brought the large man turning towards the small scattering of haphazard bunk beds that served as a temporary living quarters for those who chanced to stay a night—or more—within the headquarters. Blinking, weary eyes adjusting still further to the dimmed half-light, and he could see the curled lanky ball that was Mordecai on one of the other bunks. Mordy—who’d lost so damn much too as of recent, who was still trying to get over Bloodwing’s death and continue fighting on despite recent events. His heart had to go out to the man, and for a moment fingers—fingers that could so damn easily grip, crush, kill—brushed against Dusty’s paw. He knew the other man’s pain. He knew that anger so much, so well, but he did not go to him with to bring him comfort. Instead his near cat-quiet movements brought him before one bunk in particular—properly folded and soldier-crisp, ready for the owner to return and slumber in it that never would again. Its owner’s shotgun—old but equally well cared for, kept in pristine shape despite having seen so much damn action—was situated in a half lean against the frame, stock resting on the scuffed floor. Tucked under it was a knapsack that none of them yet had the heart to open, not without Lilith, but the crumbled end of a paper caused him pause—finally reaching to pull it out, to soothe it, and look down at the bemused faces peering so vicariously back up at him. The four of them back in New Haven, a quick snapshot of happier times taken by Scooter, a memory that the soldier had kept and carried with him until now. Until the end.

Roland was dead now. Lilith—captured.

_Retrospection was really never Brick’s strong point._  
 _But he knew that nothing would ever be the same again._

**“M’sorry, Ro—”** He did not regret his actions. He didn’t regret the things he’d had to do—the things he’d lost control and had done. Vengeance, anger, all-consuming wrath… all were emotions that he knew painfully well. What he regretted was losing that time with a man he’d called friend. All that they had all lost when they had looked at one another and gone separate ways. **“–gonna make ‘em pay, I promise.”** Brick thumbed a finger across each of the other three figures in the old photo before he almost reluctantly moved; lifting the pillow that had once been Roland’s to settle the picture beneath it, covering it. It was a childish gesture perhaps—almost as if doing so would change everything back to how it once was, as if childish wishes and hopes and dreams were all things that could still, and would still, come true. But perhaps they all needed their own methods to cope.

Stirring from Mordecai’s bunk, a shiver and shift in the older man’s previous stillness, brought Brick to hesitate and still his movements. Even the sleepy mumble of his name on the hunter’s lips—a curious question if there ever was one—did not compel him to head over there… instead he turned away, reacquainting himself with his own bed. Sleep would not come again easily, not until the acrid stench of cigar smoke had long since quelled, not until sleepy soft snores from Mordecai, lustily loud and blissful from one of the others in the other room—likely the psycho—reached his ears. Fingers soothed again and again across the paws, smiling to himself towards the image of wrapping his hands around Handsome Jack’s scrawny chicken neck in revenge for everything the bastard had done. For everything the man had stolen away, ripped and uncaring, from himself… from all these good people—Maya, Krieg, Axton, Salvador, Gaige, Zer0, and even Lil and Mordy—, from all the people of Sanctuary, for everyone on Pandora that Hyperion had touched and crushed beneath its ever looming wake. Jack would pay— and he would pay dearly for the loss.

Perhaps they really did all need their own methods to cope.

And it was with those vivid thoughts and that curved half-smile that Brick finally found sleep once more.


End file.
